By 2045, humans might lose out to machines as ‘top species’

Sci-fi authors have long predicted that robots will take over the world, but that moment may be closer than you think. Louis Del Monte, a physicist and the author of a new book, The Artificial Intelligence Revolution, has warned that humans won't be running the world anymore in 30 years time – robots will be.

"By the end of the century most of the human race will have become cyborgs," Del Monte told Business Insider. "The allure will be immortality. Machines will make breakthroughs in medical technology, most of the human race will have more leisure time, and we'll think we've never had it better. The concern I'm raising is that the machines will view us as an unpredictable and dangerous species."

This hypothetical moment in which machines surpass human intelligence is known as the technological singularity, a term coined by the mathematician John von Neumann in 1958. But Del Monte's point is that artificial intelligence will progress so rapidly that they'll soon work out that we can't be trusted.

"Humanity is unstable, creates wars, has weapons to wipe out the world twice over and makes computer viruses," he explained. "Today there’s no legislation regarding how much intelligence a machine can have, how interconnected it can be. If that continues, look at the exponential trend. We will reach the singularity in the time frame most experts predict. From that point on you’re going to see that the top species will no longer be humans, but machines."